It is not SMART.

It is not SMART.

Wrong, not smart

Mayor Bill Robertson accuses me of distortion and inaccuracies when I made it clear a legislated Calgary Metropolitan Plan (CMP) in its current form would give Calgary the veto on everything in the regions outside Calgary’s jurisdiction. He purposely avoids addressing my point, which is the CMP’s decision-making protocol. It states that a majority (50 per cent plus one) of the region’s population must approve, otherwise a proposal is defeated. Calgary has at least 80 per cent of the population in the region. Therefore, if Calgary votes no, it is no, even if all the other municipalities outside Calgary combined were in favour. The CMP gives a veto on servicing solutions outside of the city, such as in Rocky View County that has six times the land area of Calgary, and a number of servicing options that do not involve Calgary at all. No wonder Rocky View and other counties have refused to sign on.

Robertson, along with the rest of the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) gang, consistently spin the CRP’s platitudes, but fail to state that a legislated CMP’s primary goal is to give control to Calgary planning, to further restrict market choice. They call it smart. I call it wrong.